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Introduction
The advance and retreat of the integration process in Latin America
has been a topic of interest and constant debate among scholars and
politicians in both Latin America and Europe. The consolidation of
organizations of the integration process in the region has planted a
permanent question about Latin American states’ reluctance to
transfer sovereignty to the organizations of such institutions. Even
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* Article submitted on September 20th, 2013 and approved for publication in November 12th, 2013.
** Eduardo Pastrana Buelvas has a doctorate degree in International Law from University of Leip-
zig, Germany, and is Lawyer from Universidad Santiago de Cali (USC), Colombia. He is a professor
at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana in Bogotá (PUJB), and Director of the Department of Internatio-
nal Relations of the Faculty of Political Sciences and International Relations. He heads of the re-
search group of International Relations, Latin America and Integration (GRIALI), and is edi-
tor-in-chief of the academic journal Papel Político. E-mail: efpastranab@gmail.com.
CONTEXTO INTERNACIONAL Rio de Janeiro, vol. 35, no 2, julho/dezembro 2013, p. 443-469.
Why Regionalism
Has Failed in Latin
America: Lack of
Stateness as an
Important Factor
for Failure of
Sovereignty Transfer
in Integration
Projects*Eduardo Pastrana Buelvas**
institutions like the Andean Community of Nations (ACN), whose
organization had supranational functions, imitating the institutional
development of the European Union, could never put into practice
the supra-nationality concept which it theoretically embraced. The-
refore, it explains why the ACN has been the object of many inter-
pretations, as well as the failure in Latin America to build integratio-
nal spaces where the concept of shared sovereignty can be applied.
There are many causes which could explain this phenomenon. Ho-
wever, in this paper we will, from a comprehensive and interpretative
approach, only deal with one of the possible factors that influence the
little interest shown by Latin American states to build scenarios of
shared sovereignty. In this sense, we consider that national sovere-
ignty, in terms of its classic concept, has not fully developed in Latin
America because of the low levels of “stateness” in evidence since
the beginning of the Latin American republics. This has limited the
development of regional ties necessary to advance to a “deeper” regi-
onalism which would go beyond the current multilateral trade agree-
ments. This phenomenon is also strengthened by the unfinished pro-
cess of state building in most Latin American countries, which high-
lights the deficit of complete exercise of internal sovereignty. There-
fore, a question arises: how does weak stateness and the unfinished
process of its development, impact on those states’ reluctance to
transfer their sovereignty to regional organizations?
To answer this question, we will begin by contrasting the classical
and contemporary ideas of sovereignty to show conceptual elements
which will allow us to understand the development of this principle
in Latin America and in Europe. Second, we will reflect briefly about
the way the concept of sovereignty has been conceived through the
Latin American state formation processes, taking as a starting point
the Colonial Period and pointing out factors of structural weakness in
terms of institutionalism and stateness in the Republican Era. Third,
we will interpret the concept of sovereignty in integration thought
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and its three big waves: developmentalism (old regionalism), neo-li-
beralism (new regionalism), and post hegemonic regionalism. Along
these issues a comparative reflection about the meaning of sovere-
ignty in the European Union (EU) formation process and some inte-
gration processes in Latin America is undertaken, as well as reflec-
ting on the influence that the theoretical debate has had on both sides
of the Atlantic to understand those processes. Fourth, the character of
sovereignty in Latin America and its impact on integration will be lo-
oked into. Fifth, current regionalism perspectives will be discussed;
and, sixth, the relevant relationships in South America will be depic-
ted and the concept of sovereignty and regionalization be analyzed.
The Classic and
Contemporary Idea of
Sovereignty
Classical Sovereignty’s fundamental object is the territory and the
population contained in a country and, furthermore, it constitutes a
power, of which the state is the exclusive subject. For authors such as
Bodino (1973) and Hobbes (2003), among others, these two conditi-
ons of sovereignty, its object and its subject, must be articulated by a
series of laws that refer to the sovereign’s authority as being a legiti-
mate and unquestionable leader in all cases, even if there may be gaps
or spaces of time when the sovereign, whether a prince or a similar fi-
gure, will delegate functions to a subject with special characteristics.
Thus, classical sovereignty needs a subject with the necessary power
and legal justification or force to implement its authority without the
response of another power.
Beyond classical sovereignty as an attribute, it is necessary to take
into account that sovereignty does not limit one’s actions to the do-
mestic dimension of the state, but operates also in an external dimen-
sion (HELD, 2002, p. 13). In this case, based on the classic funda-
mental principles, sovereignty denotes autonomy and independency
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of states against any kind of authority external to it. In the words of
Held, “external sovereignty is a quality that political societies pos-
sess in relationship to one another; it is associated with the aspiration
of a community to determine its own direction and politics without
undue interference from other powers” (HINSLEY, 1986 apud
HELD, 2002, p. 14).
Indeed, understanding sovereignty as an absolute condition of the
state, in XVII century Europe an international scenario came into be-
ing in which the relations were between “sovereign states” and abso-
lute authority, but beyond the type of government that ruled these.
This “international society” will certainly find in the 1648 Peace of
Westphalia its normative assumption, based on the respect of the
main object of sovereignty: territory.
This form of classical sovereignty occurred in Europe in the context
of a few national geographical segmentations, which are more or less
defined, and the formation of governments oriented towards empo-
wering the productive capacity and not merely the extractive capacity
of its population, mainly through the contributions of mercantilists
and physiocrats (FOUCAULT, 2007, p. 132-134). In contrast, in the
case of the European colonies in Latin America, the generation of
wealth was fundamentally of extractive character and focused on ob-
taining “precious materials.” This implies, at least, a difficulty for the
analysis of sovereignty and stateness in the subcontinent, since its
territories in colonial times operated as overseas extensions of Euro-
pean empires.
On the other hand, the dynamic character of international relations
presupposes state sovereignty as its main element. According to
Malberg (1948, p. 82), it is defined as “Independence on the outer
side and superiority on the inside”. Therefore, sovereignty refers to
the “right of the state to rule over a defined territory” and autonomy is
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the “real power that a nation state has to articulate and pursue their
political goals independently” (HELD, 1997, p. 130).
Nowadays, however, states are required to rely on a stronger form of
multilateralism in order to solve global problems; because the pro-
blems cross boundaries, the most bona fide instrument to approach
them is international cooperation. The latter makes it necessary to
transfer regulatory powers to supranational institutions, or to esta-
blish a network of international regimes, which impose specific duti-
es on the respective realms of states. Hence, international cooperati-
on does not end sovereignty but amplifies and re-substantiates it
(BECK, 2004, p. 279). Consequently, the concept of absolute sovere-
ignty is nowadays considered anachronistic because of the great
amount of international interactions and interdependence, such that
it was defined as a faculty divided in multiple agencies – national and
international – and limited by the nature of this plurality (HELD,
1997, p. 169).
Sovereignty, Stateness and
Populism in South America
One must take into consideration the fact that, because these territori-
es were colonies, they were denied the possibility of counting on the
presence of the European monarch. Therefore, most of the time ru-
ling was done remotely and without the possibility of the central po-
wers sufficiently exercising the rigorous application of royal manda-
tes in colonized territories. This caused a marginal relationship, but
not unimportant, between the European states in formation and their
overseas territories. This meant that absolute sovereignty, which was
advocated in continental empires, was not strong enough to encom-
pass effectively colonized territories. From this situation another
constraint or analytical element arose, which is that the stateness1
that advanced in Europe had a rhythm and teleological evolution
which was different from what was gestated in the colonies. This dif-
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ference caused fundamentally different outcomes: while Europe ad-
vanced in consolidating state institutions capable of handling the
complexities arising from the advent of modernity, in the colonies
there was no possibility of unlinking religious power and traditional
elites from political and economic institutions, not even in the advan-
ced periods of modernity – the late eighteenth and early nineteenth
century. In this sense, and as Castro-Gómez correctly observes, re-
ferring to the process of building an institutional state in the South
American region, “the whole nineteenth century will witness the
struggle between the nationalization of property and the “patrimoni-
alization” of state power” (CASTRO-GÓMEZ, 2005, p. 349).
These elements give origin to the identification of a certain initial fra-
ilty, which has manifested itself in the two centuries of republican
history in Latin America, in that the region, in order to move towards
republican governments, developed governments whose most im-
portant purpose was the consolidation of new states which arose
from the wars of independence. Frequently, the consolidation of ex-
ternal sovereignty from extra-regional threats was, since the begin-
ning of republican history, a main concern. Internal sovereignty was
never driven to or by the concept of stateness, namely the conditions
for the real exercise of sovereignty; it was an incomplete construction
subject to the emergence of internal problems in the new republics.
In Latin America, weak industrialization and political economical li-
mitations, both internal and external, for investing in the defense sec-
tor, reduced the possibility of any state being seen as a threat by its ne-
ighbors. At the same time, most countries encountered internal con-
flicts, which strongly pressured the coffers of the republics and limi-
ted the management capacities, and accordingly, the development of
stateness in both extensive and intensive terms. The main consequen-
ce was the inability to exercise sovereignty throughout the territory.
While Europe reached more effective stateness and internal sovere-
ignty and the threats to the continent were external to states, however
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close (located in the European space), in Latin America, threats were
mainly located outside the sub continental space and internal sovere-
ignty was not consolidated.
Thus, what can be observed from most of the two centuries following
Latin American independence is a structural weakness in terms of
institutionalism and stateness, which transcended, among other
things, the strong influence of the executive function of governing, as
a response to that weakness. During the colonial years, a personal re-
lationship with the monarch, who represented authority as a person,
was fostered. The new republics demanded loyalty to the state as an
abstract entity. Later on, it was difficult for citizens to consider either
the state, the nation or the people, as worthy of personal loyalty and as
sovereignty bearers. Instead, caudillos, which emerged from civil
wars, were the object and source of authority for new societies
(KÖNIG, 1998, p. 25). However, these caudillos were the biggest
threat which the young republics faced in maintaining their precari-
ous integrations. Only when finally one of these caudillos2
was able
to impose itself on others, was it possible to consolidate the unificati-
on of these new states (ODDONE, 1986, p. 219). These so-called
unifying autocracies, which consolidated themselves in the mid ni-
neteenth century, served as obstructions to the centrifuge powers that
appeared after the independence wars (GERMANI, 1962, p. 25).
Since then, Latin American states have been trying to advance in the-
ir state building processes; however, they continue to have more terri-
tory than state.
By disregarding the real capacity of state institutions to operate effec-
tively throughout the whole population and territory to which they
formally belong, the executive power has served as a cohesion refe-
rence for society, which has resulted in strong populism3
in most of
these countries. In other words, the classic populist model focused on
national practices and references, in an introspective and parochial
government reality, which attempted to marginalize the international
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system’s flows and to respond to internal and external challenges
through the construction of suffocating political systems and in-
wardly focused economic systems, with processes centered on the
executive agent. Once market and society are subordinated to the sta-
te, autonomous political economic and cultural dynamics are almost
non-existent (PASTRANA; VERA, 2011, p. 602).
One of the characteristics of the populist dynamic4
is that it fre-
quently privileges internal matters over external ones, which is one of
the causes that reinforces the distance between Latin American
countries and their lack of interest in building common dynamics
and, especially, means of sovereignty transfer. In so far as the distan-
cing has limited the construction of regional ties necessary to the ad-
vancement of a “deep” regionalism (the kind that goes beyond the
commercial and financial liberal stages) one can ponder whether the
non-consolidation of sovereignty in terms similar to those of classi-
cal sovereignty, the low levels of stateness developed since the begin-
ning of Latin American republics, and the subordination of the state,
society, and market in populist governments, among other factors,
play a part that subtracts power and impact from the integration pro-
cesses in the region. Besides, the unfinished state building process in
most Latin American societies, with the subsequent absence of state-
ness in many parts of the territory, highlights the fact that the full
exercise of sovereignty is still in deficit. From this the questions fol-
lows: How much does the reluctance of Latin American states to
transfer sovereignty in the processes of integration also stem from the
fact that they cannot exercise it fully in all their territories? In other
words, you can’t share what you do not fully possess.
The Concept of Sovereignty
in Integration Thinking
In Latin America, integration thought has developed in three big wa-
ves: the first, based on the ECLAC’s structural and economic analy-
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sis (developmental/developmentalism) which began at the end of the
forties and had its peak in the 1960s and 1970s; the second, of neoli-
beral (neo-liberalism) inspiration and particularly strong in the nine-
ties; and the third, called post-hegemonic (RIGGIROZZI; TUSSIE,
2010, p. 12)5
that developed at the beginning of this century
(SERBIN, 2011, p. 50). However, in spite of 60 years of integratio-
nist thinking, or even more if we consider Bolivarianism, a solid inte-
gration process has yet to be developed in Latin America.
This thought is closely linked to the fact that integration, analyzed
both in its conceptual and historical dimensions, usually uses the pro-
cess that culminated with the creation of the European Union as a pa-
rameter and benchmark. That is why authors like Haas (1967) and ot-
hers evaluated the Latin American integration as weak, while the Eu-
ropean integration is considered strong. Both because of the contem-
porary political reality of an integrated Europe and the fact that most
conceptual developments about integration come from that conti-
nent, the comparison is sometimes inevitable. However, this compa-
rison is valid if one accepts the linear character of integration, assu-
ming Latin America is the weak end of integration and Europe as the
strong end of the same process, or, in other words, that Latin America
is going through – not very effectively – a process that will eventually
place it on the same path of integration as the European model. Ho-
wever, more than just comparing two points in an integration conti-
nuum, one should highlight that there are two historically produced
experiences, which result in two different ways of conceiving both
integration and sovereignty.
It is difficult to understand the conceptualization of integration and
sovereignty in Europe separate from its historical process. Other than
the classic references, which appear in the works of Kant (2002) for
example, the integration thinking that gives shape to the analytical
axes of federalism-neofederalism on one hand, and functiona-
lism-neofunctionalism on the other, have developed in response to
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the experiences of the World Wars in the first half of the twentieth
century. The contemporary developments of federalism come from
authors such as Rossi and Spinelli (1941), who based their works on
politics more than academia, and who argued in the Ventotene Mani-
festo6
that the survival of nation-states’full sovereignty is a danger to
the survival of Europe, since the desire to guarantee one’s defense re-
sulted in wars. So they propose supra-nationalism as an alternative
solution. This was the idea present when the European order first be-
gan to be planned, as, for example, at the 1948 Congress of Europe in
The Hague where an economic and political union was discussed in
order to prevent European conflicts.
Federalism’s classic authors, such as Guy Héraud (1968) and Carl
Friedrich (1968), had in mind this historical preoccupation of an in-
ter-European war and argued that the continent could have moved to-
wards a federation which would overcome the traditional mistrust of
national sovereignty in favor of a supranational European authority.
Despite the efforts of both Paul Schuman's and Jean Monnet with
CECA in 1952 to introduce and develop the notion of supranationa-
lity, in practice, “inter-gubernamentalism” has been predominant.
However, with the Single EU Act (1986) and the EU Treaty (1992),
the supra-nationality issue rises again. The result was that neo-fede-
ralist authors such as Sidjanski (1992) and José Martín y Pérez de
Nanclares (1997) have argued that the process was a result of the Eu-
ropean call for federalization.
The preoccupation that propels the development of the functionalism
view on integration is not different. David Mitrany (1933), one of the
fundamentalists, also had in mind the devastations caused by World
War I. He argued that nation-states are not effective in facing challen-
ges that the post-war scenario poses. However, once again, his preoc-
cupation was that this lack of effectiveness could result in a war. He
believed that the state was not efficient enough in certain technical
functions and that such deficiencies could be alleviated at an interna-
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tional level. He maintained that the solution is not an international
state (the idea closest to federalism), but building international entiti-
es that can take over some functions of the nation state (Mitrany,
1943, p. 143). His main point was that these institutions would incre-
ase interdependence and therefore reduce the risk of war. This focus
developed in the 1950’s and is linked to the first steps of economic in-
tegration of the ECSC.
In a new stage of functionalist theorization, now presented by authors
such as Ernst Haas (1958), integration was analyzed in terms of a
transfer of loyalty from national institutions to international ones,
which would have jurisdiction over national affairs. In the author’s
opinion, when loyalties don’t shift to international authorities, but re-
main national, integration isn’t produced, but maybe political un-
derstanding is.
As we can see, both federalism and functionalism start their analysis
from the historical event of World War I and the consequences of ma-
intaining European national sovereignties. Both integration proposi-
tions answer a problem that is specifically European; thus, it is not
surprising that in other parts of the world, i.e. Latin America, signifi-
cant proposals following this line were not developed. Equally,
neo-federalism and neo-functionalism did not propose a universal
analysis of integration, but explained the evolution of the European
process specifically. However, in Latin America the historical expe-
rience did not derive from debates on the dangers of sovereignty and,
besides that, did not have a “federalist” experience that could be ex-
plained.
In the case of Latin America, the historical trigger that fostered the
reflection on integration was not an international war menace, but the
preoccupation with underdevelopment, which means that the theme
of sovereignty was not thought of in the same terms. In contrast with
functionalism and federalism, structuralism served as the analytical
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framework for integration. Since the end of the 1940’s, Raúl Pre-
bisch, among others, proposed through the ECLAC to look more clo-
sely into Latin American history. The center of his analysis was no
longer how to avoid war, or how to build a stable post war order, but
how to improve commercial trade conditions between the Northern
and Southern hemispheres, or as he would say, between the center
and the periphery.
His starting point was that while the center had a modern production
apparatus, specialized and diversified, the peripheral zones had an
extractive, unspecialized, mono-exporting character. This perspecti-
ve is inspired by the analysis of authors such as André Gunder Frank
(1965), Arghiri Emmanuel (1964) and Samir Amin (1974), who fol-
low the Marxist tradition. There were also Latin American represen-
tative authors, such as Prebisch (1986), Furtado (1956), Santos
(1966), and Cardoso and Faletto (1977). They all agreed that diffe-
rences in terms of trade tended to deepen so as to make the conditions
of the periphery worse; and so the thinking revolved around how to
overcome this difficulty and the way proposed pointed to strengthe-
ning the state hand in hand with “closed regionalism”.
Thus, while in Europe integration is understood as an alternative to
the hazards of strong sovereignty, to the point that Haas (1958) held
that integration implied the transfer of sovereignty, in Latin America,
sovereignty was not a concern or risk to overcome, and therefore, the
idea of ??integration did not lead the way, but structural underdeve-
lopment did. On the contrary, when conceiving that weakness in ma-
nufacturing is the cause of the periphery’s condition, and that sta-
te-centric protectionism is a solution, the purpose of integration was
to strengthen Latin American stateness.
After this first wave of Latin American integrationist thought, a se-
cond wave closer to “open regionalism” arose in the nineties, consis-
tent with the neoliberal vision that was gaining strength in those years
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in which integration is replaced by openness and harmonization of
markets, as a base for inclusion in the international arena based on in-
creasing competitiveness. While the purpose is no longer the streng-
thening of stateness, it will not lead to the transfer of sovereignty be-
cause the goals are primarily commercial, and political integration is
not a relevant issue.
The Character of
Sovereignty in Latin
America and its Impact on
Integration
In the analysis of the relationship between integration and sovere-
ignty in Latin America, the first conclusion is that, neither in the first
nor in the second wave of Latin American integration, was the trans-
fer of sovereignty sought, and there were even attempts to strengthen
sovereignty. Unlike Europe, where the main threat to Westphalian
sovereignty came from the same European states and the resulting
solution was to modify the relationships between them, in Latin
America the principle of non-intervention has traditionally been res-
pected and external interference has mainly come from players outsi-
de the region. Therefore, the relationships to be modified are not tho-
se that occur between neighbors, as in the case of Europe, but betwe-
en Latin American states and extra-regional powers. The result was
that what was sought was not a formula to get a group of neighboring
states to cease being mutual threats, but how to increase independen-
ce from extra-regional powers and make viable the projection of their
own autonomy; in other words, to constantly strengthen Westphalian
sovereignty reaffirming Calvo and Drago doctrines as opposed to ex-
ternal interference (SERBIN, 2011, p. 59).
As stated, in contrast with Europe, Latin American states have had
weak internal sovereignty manifested in an institutional framework
incapable of regulating some internal behavior, which has been offset
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by endemic phenomena such as “caudillism” and populism, or at le-
ast, by a strong presidential function. The repetition of these forms of
government in which the leader extends his authority by weakening
other branches of government has strengthened personalism and pa-
ternalism (PASTRANA; VERA, 2012, p. 316).
This is relevant because, as argued by Koenig-Archibugi (2004), the
willingness to cede sovereignty in favor of integration can be explai-
ned as an executive branch behavior in an attempt to increase room
for maneuvering against the restrictions imposed by internal factors
on its behavior. When national institutions have the capability to in-
fluence or restrict the executive branch, they choose to cooperate
with other heads of state to create supranational entities that are bin-
ding upon the state in such a way as to restrict the ability of these ins-
titutions to influence national decision-making. In contrast, when the
executive branch is autonomous from domestic institutions, they
tend to favor less the transfer of sovereignty because it does not incre-
ase the executive's discretion. Instead, intergovernmental approa-
ches prevail, and multiple examples of “personalism” and regional or
sub regional leadership aspirations become commonplace.
The Regionalism
Perspectives
The third wave of Latin American thought on integration, here called
post-hegemonic, has been built in regards to concepts such as region
and regionalism. This kind of regionalization has been defined as
post-hegemonic, as it is not guided exclusively by trade integration,
but implies a re-politization of regional formulation as a resistance to
US hegemony, and it is built over collective identity elements – oppo-
sed to neoliberal individualism – which asks for social welfare im-
provement. If it is tackled as regionalism as a whole, a hybrid model
emerges, concerned with growth and economic stability, but also
with social justice, more or less free market oriented, and a relatively
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new way of confronting the United States’ hegemony
(RIGGIROZZI; TUSSIE, 2010, p. 12). Overall, ALBA and
UNASUR aim to be the answer to the open regionalism approach and
the US hegemony, the first wave being more confrontational, the se-
cond being more pragmatic, with the development of cooperative ap-
proaches to topics such as education, health, social security and regi-
onal security.
However, post-hegemonic regionalism shows different paths to con-
solidate different regionalisms from the European ones guided by the
functionalism and federalism; as well as those of the new regiona-
lism, which tie the regionalization process to the market. Entities
such as ALBA and UNASUR innovate about ways to understand so-
cial cohesion, regional identity, and specificities of regional gover-
nance. However, those regionalization forms coexist with others wit-
hin the same space, but which answer more to the logic of new regio-
nalism (The Pacific Alliance, consisting of Colombia, Peru, Chile
and Mexico). The first takes Latin Americanism elements, with as-
pects of Bolivarism, which are based on the existence of a common
history and culture to project a common and autonomous future, es-
pecially from the US. The second approach of regionalism maintains
the idea of the Monroe Doctrine, a continental unique space – Pana-
mericanism – led by the US and free of the extra-hemispheric
influence.
Again, and as with integration, conceptualization also has strong Eu-
ropean influence and emerges in the post-World War II era. Amid po-
litical, academic, and social debates about the desirable future for a
devastated Europe, federalist and functionalist perspectives, amid
their different prescriptions, were betting on a common interpretati-
on: the struggle for the defense of the sovereignty of the nation-state
was directly responsible for leading Europe (with its epicenter in the
Franco-German rivalry) into a general war (HETTNE;
SÖDERBAUM, 2008, p. 63).
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This basic idea challenged head on what observers associated with
political realism had considered a virtue and the “engine” of Europe-
an development policy: civic and military industrial competition,
plus mutual deterrence between states, strengthened by alliances and
temporary counter- alliances (and other geopolitical factors such as
rugged terrain), which had secured, since the collapse of the Habs-
burg Empire, a balance between powers that facilitated both the ex-
pansion of free markets and innovative ideas and political pluralism
(KENNEDY, 1997) in a kind of “invisible hand” that resulted in indi-
rect benefit to everyone. In Henry Kissinger (1995) one can trace the
notion that the individual pursuit of European states’ 'national inte-
rest', as opposed to the enforcement of a universal moral or collective
goal “harmonious” with integralist pretensions, condensed in the im-
perialist project continued frustration by calculations of power and
recurrence of defending territorial security. However, it is also recog-
nized that the complexity and diplomatic “secrecy” of balance of po-
wer induced alliances (Bismarckian style) eventually degenerated
into a “zero sum ??game”; a scenario in which neither wanted to give
in and the key protagonists sought “total victory”, so that sovere-
ignty, power, militarization and mass ideologies operated together to
result in the “era of massacres” of the first half of the twentieth cen-
tury (HOBSBAWM, 1998).
Within a very different cognitive framework, Europe begins to be
seen as a historical, political, and cultural heritage: the region, in see-
king the way out of the legacies of rivalry between powers and real-
politik, also pushed for economic reconstruction which would not
depend indefinitely on U.S. funding (Marshall Plan) and was chal-
lenged by the rapid advance of Soviet communism in the East
(VOYENNE, 1965). Proposals like Héraud’s (1968, p. 77) argued
that the epicenter of political organization of the nation should go
from the nation to the region, which involves overcoming the ethnic
criterion that shaped the modern state and recognizing that cultural
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similarities and common purposes can be constituents of political
units, in this case, European.
So, the first or “old” regionalism has, since the fifties, put federalism
in debate (European states united by a constitution and federal insti-
tutions, legislative coordination between the national and the Euro-
pean and collective identity based on a universality of liberal-demo-
cratic values) with functionalism (international / European organiza-
tions with narrowly defined skills and operating only in critical areas
such as trade, transport, productivity and social policy, and institutio-
nal arrangements with supranational technocratic economic criteria
rather than polit ical) (VOYENNE, 1965; HETTNE;
SÖDERBAUM, 2008, p. 63). The “catalyst factor” and common
trigger for bracketing sovereignty and thinking of Europe as a region
and its future as a collective good, either as a community or federati-
on of states with sectored integration, tacitly or explicitly, was then
the negative interpretation given to one of the causes of the two world
wars: the unilateral defense of sovereignty.
However, while in the federalist stance, territoriality remains a cen-
tral attribute of referencing and governance (local and federal), to
Mitrany (1965) and the functionalists, the Westphalian space logic
must yield entirely in the areas where governance was more efficient
when headed by specialized agencies in their jurisdictions.
But appealing to the sovereignty types distinguished by Krasner
(2000), what was at stake in the functionalist view was not so much
Westphalian sovereignty, consisting of the exclusion of external for-
ces of authority, international law underpinning the political and le-
gal status of states as subjects of international rights and obligations
or of interdependence sovereignty, expressed in the actual ability to
control internal and external flows that permeate borders; rather,
what mattered was to replace the internal sovereignty or stateness,
defined in terms of institutional efficiency, either national or local, to
Why Regionalism Has Failed in Latin America:
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regulate phenomena and behavior, wherever states were diagnosed
as inefficient or ineffective, for new forms of public institutions, alt-
hough not combined with the transfer of legitimacy and citizen lo-
yalty to these institutions of decision making.
For Hettne and Söderbaum (2008, p. 63-64), this forced “de-politiza-
tion” led to the emergence of the previously mentioned Haas (1967)
neo-functionalist perspective which incorporated the role of politics
(pro-integration role of leaders and the emergence of loyalties trans-
ferred to policy networks) and the politically guided introduction of
vectors or niches that created high levels of positive interdependence
(“spillovers”) located primarily in the economic field. They enable
the explanation, for a time, of the relationship between the sharing of
resources and technologies of the coal and steel industry (in the
ECSC) and the political goal of achieving the European Common
Market. However, the intensification of bipolar competition at the
time had a direct impact on the (national) security dimension, and the
resurgence of nationalist leaders like De Gaulle in the sixties who
brought back the national interest, the state-centrism and negotiati-
ons between leaders in both realistic and liberal intergovernmental
prospects (HETTNE; SÖDERBAUM, 2008, p. 64).
South America: Sovereignty
and Regionalization
While in Europe the idea of ??”region” was proposed as an alternati-
ve to the national criterion that shaped the modern state, in the hope
that this would allow Europe to overcome confrontations (Héraud,
1968, p. 77), in Latin America the approach of a limited space com-
posed of common elements that differentiated between internal and
external, the idea of ??an extra-regional threat to sovereignty retur-
ned. In fact, the idea of ??space that appears in the ECLAC thinking
in mid twentieth century, resumed Bolivarianism approaches and ni-
neteenth-century Latin Americanism that speaks of the unity of Latin
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America as a defensive strategy of a multiethnic and multicultural
nation against Anglophone and Francophone threats (ARDAO,
2006, p. 160). In addition to the diversity of nations and cultures, the
ECLAC project also includes the plurality of states.
That is why – while the conception of the European region included
from the beginning of the postwar concerns about an integration in-
cluding the transfer of sovereignty – in Latin America the idea of a re-
gion did not challenge state-centric logic as the guiding principle of
the region. And then, during the nineties when the purpose of interna-
tional integration was focused more on trade than on the definition of
a space, not only is the thought for the formation of a region minimal,
but in the absence of policy with integration objectives in this period,
the issue of sovereignty is not brought into discussion.
On this point, a reflection about Haas’ neofunctionalism is valid
(HAAS, 1967, p. 323-325). When comparing the European and La-
tin American integration, he argues that the latter is weak because it is
based on economic purposes difficult to sustain in the long-term. His
argument is that integration is not the product of altruism but of con-
venience, because stakeholders are committed to it only if it is to their
own benefit. Therefore, the first thing that usually comes up is econo-
mic integration, as this is where the benefits are more tangible in the
short term.
The interesting thing is that in analyzing the Latin American case,
one attributes its weakness to the fact that while integration begins on
an economic level, in the long term it is ephemeral because from the-
re, integration can only move forward if it is guided by a deeper philo-
sophical or ideological commitment. Otherwise, integration based
on economic considerations eventually wears down. While projects
such as the ECSC, the Economic Community and EURATOM were
essentially sustained by economic considerations, they were in step
early on with the political calculation for the pacification and regio-
nalization of Europe. In contrast, both ECLAC integration, which
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was the one analyzed by Haas, and the neoliberal integration of the
nineties, were not sustained by long-term political projects.
This only began to change in the late twentieth century when a post li-
beral integration scheme appeared. The end of the Cold War marked
the beginning of a period of transition between bipolarity and multi-
polarity, in which new countries begin to emerge as significant global
players. One of those countries, Brazil, began to reconceptualize the
issue of region in Latin America and leads a new division, now in
South America. Following the Latin Americanist tradition, South
America is a space that excludes the United States and Canada, but –
now for Latin Americans – it also excludes Mexico and Central Ame-
rica. In the first steps of the redefinition of space, integration starts
from the economic promotion through MERCOSUR. Then, and in
parallel with the construction of UNASUR, the emergence of these
political and philosophical purposes which Haas missed in the
ECLAC period, become visible.
Finally both MERCOSUR, created in the nineties, and UNASUR, cre-
ated in the first decade of XXI century, begin to shape a new region for
Brazilian foreign policy strategy. Both organizations, the first with a
trade character and the second more political, are the institutional face
of the regionalization process. Even though it is possible to recognize
them as the spearhead of the third integration wave – the post-hegemo-
nic –, supranationality and shared sovereignty are not part of those or-
ganizations’objectives. Again, the reason is strongly related to the lack
of discussion about national sovereignties, the low level of stateness
consolidation in the member states, as well as the value Brazil gives to
the region as a means to project its foreign policy.
Conclusions
Sovereignty cannot be understood as an attribute of government that
is based solely on a regulatory framework. Undoubtedly, a key ele-
ment for sovereignty to be effectively deployed is that the state has
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institutions at both organizational and legal levels in order to be a le-
gitimate government throughout the territory and population. Loo-
king at the Latin American experience of sovereignty building, a low
level of stateness has been an important and influential factor. It has
limited the strength of sovereignty in several countries of the region
and served as a limiting factor in the consolidation of the regional in-
tegration spaces.
In Europe, the theoretical and practical developments of integration
occurred in response to the two World Wars, which called into questi-
on the system of sovereign nation-states, given their propensity to
lead to clashes between neighboring countries. In contrast, national
sovereignty in Latin America never posed the threat of large-scale in-
ternational wars, and therefore integration is not thought of as a pro-
cess to transfer sovereignty or to diminish conflict, but as sociopoliti-
cal alliances between similar countries, which from the creation of
economic ties could address underdevelopment.
The concept of region emerged in Europe amid the search for a crite-
rion of political organization that could replace the nation state logic.
Meanwhile, in Latin America, “region” was always understood as
the way of conceiving the space that allowed it to exclude the United
States and Europe, who were the main threats to sovereignty. Thus,
“region” has been in Latin America a project to strengthen sovere-
ignty, which since the late twentieth century has been politically sub-
divided into a new region called South America retaining much of
this purpose.
Notes
1. It is important to make difference beetwen statehood and stateness. “State-
hood” is an old notion and its definition can be find in all dictionaries and
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encyclopedias. Statehood – “the condition or status of being a political state” or
“the status of being a recognized independent nation”. “Stateness” focuses on
state activity, structures and functions and also defines historical, intellectual
and cultural dimensions of this phenomenon. It means the degree to which the
instruments of government are differentiated from other organizations, centrali-
zed, autonomous, and formally coordinated with each other”. Moreover state-
ness is defined in four dimensions: “(a) creation of the organization for the mo-
bilization of resources: bureaucracy and tax burden; (b) external consolidation
of the territory: army; (c) maintenance of internal order: police and judiciary;
and (d) state activism in regulatory activities and in economic and social inter-
ventionism” (ZAYTSEV, 2013).
2. For example Juan Manuel Rosas Argentina (1834-1851) and José Antonio
Páez (1830-1863) in Venezuela.
3. Populism defined as a political strategy with three characteristics. A perso-
nal leader to a heterogeneous mass of followers who feel left out and are availa-
ble for mobilization; the leader reaches the followers in a direct, quasi-personal
manner that bypasses established intermediary organizations, especially parti-
es; if the leader builds a new or revives an old populist party, it remains a perso-
nal vehicle with a low level of institutionalization (WEYLAND, 2001, p. 381).
Moreover to facilitate comparative analysis of different populist expressions, a
synthetic construction of populism can be founded on the following five core
properties: 1. a personal and paternalistic, though not necessarily charismatic,
pattern of political leadership; 2. a heterogeneous, multi-class political coalition
concentrated in subaltern sectors of society; 3. a top-down process of political
mobilization that either bypasses institutionalized forms of mediator or subor-
dinates them to more direct linkages between the leader and the masses; 4. an
amorphous or eclectic ideology, characterized by a discourse that exalts subal-
tern sectors or is anti-elitist and/or antiestablishment; 5. an economic project
that utilizes widespread redistributive or clientelistic methods to create a mate-
rial foundation for popular sector support (ROBERTS, 1995, p. 88).
4. For instance Álvaro Uribe (Colombian President 2002-2010) approached
and conducted foreign policy in the framework of a populist strategy. Foreign
policy is one of most effective of the symbolic policies in providing a stage for
the actions of a charismatic leader (PASTRANA; VERA, 2011).
5. Thinking about the latest debates I have decided to adopt the post-hegemo-
nic concept of regionalism instead the post-liberal one.
6. The “Ventotene Manifesto for a Free and United Europe” written by two
antifascist militants, is considered today by the European Union as one of its
foundational references. See: European Commission, The EU founding fathers.
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Available at: <http://europa.eu/about-eu/eu-history/founding-fathers/pdf/altie-
ro_spinelli_es.pdf>.
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Abstract
Why Regionalism Has Failed in
Latin America: Lack of Stateness
as an Important Factor for Failure
of Sovereignty Transfer in
Integration Projects
This paper shows, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the incidence of
lack of “stateness” and its construction process in Latin American states, as
well as showing the reluctance on the part of Latin American states to
transfer sovereignty to regional integrational organizations. First, classical
and contemporary ideas of sovereignty are contrasted, in order to
understand the development of the sovereignty concept in Latin America
and Europe. Second, we interpret how the sovereignty concept has been
conceived through Latin American states’ formation process. Third, the
sovereignty process is adressed within integration thinking and its three big
waves: the developmental, neoliberal and post-hegemonic waves. Fourth,
the concept of sovereignty in Latin America and its impact on the region are
discussed critically. Fifth, current regionalism perspectives are explained.
Sixth, the current relationship between sovereignty and regionalization in
South America is described. And finally, throughout this paper, we
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maintain that it is the weakness of “stateness” in the Latin American states
which has had an important influence on their reluctance to transfer
national sovereignty to regional integration institutions.
Keywords: Sovereignty – Integration – Stateness – Regionalism
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